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Monday, June 8, 2015

After a looong month, I'm finally back in the saddle and have resumed a normal schedule. Never, ever, ever will I take my back for granted. As of today, I can sit for longer periods of time and I'm trying to be conscious of taking breaks to stretch and walk. I'm also back to yoga and swimming and it feels wonderful. I feel for all those folks who have chronic back problems...now I'm a bit more understanding of what you go through.

Last week, my niece Ellie put on a recital at her school. After years of performance in theater and in singing groups, she was selected as one of three high school Seniors for the Steward Senior Honors Performance Award. As part of that award, the recipients prepare all year for a Senior performance recital which was held last week.

It was a bit of a big deal in our family as we've spent many years watching Ellie's performances so we wanted to make her something special to commemorate her big day.

Her middle name is Rose so we gathered together the cousins and set about making her a bouquet of paper roses to be given to her after her recital.

I bought a bag of commercial size filters from the office supply store and used RIT dyes from the craft store in different shades of red, pink and yellow.

It was easy to vary the shade by diluting with water or by dipping the center of the filter in one color and the outside of the filter in another.

I put them in the dryer on air dry. When they came out they were a wrinkly mess so we straightened them out and sorted them by color and intensity.

The easiest rose was made by cutting the filter into a spiral and then pleating the spiral strip along a piece of masking tape...

Once the strip was pleated, we rolled the pleats around a wire stem to make our roses...

This step took a bit of practice and each person's roses had their own personal flair...

Even Jack's. In the past year, Jack has become increasingly fond of the color black. After the girls left he asked if I had any black dye and set about making a black rose for Ellie's bouquet...

We also made a few coffee filter peonies...

And painted a sign...

By the night of the recital, we were all in attendance, flowers at the ready...

She was brilliant.

Of course I'm biased. I've heard Ellie sing and perform for years but this was the first time that she had the freedom to create her own production.

From the selection of her songs, to the timing of her delivery, to the emotions that she was able to convey through her voice and body language...I was taken on a journey. And I was very moved by what she had to say...where she had been, were she is now and where she'd like to go. To me, it was all there...a deep and tender message from her heart...to everyone who heard her perform. She was more than a singer and more than an actress. She was an artist and it was beautiful to see.

Afterward, we waited in the lobby for her to come out, bouquet at the ready...

And signs held high...

While we waited, we had time to notice that four of us were wearing striped dresses...

The Star and her Stripes (too bad I didn't think of that picture until now!)

When she arrived, there were enough flowers for Ellie and the arms of her parents...

And we were happy to see that our paper roses held their own when placed near the real thing.

In fact, Ellie didn't even realize they were paper until someone told her.

An everlasting bouquet of roses made by her supporting cast of girl cousins...

Lovely post. After following your family's crafty love all these years, it didn't surprise me that you all would gather to create the best bouquet ever! Love the black one too...and the purple hair...and the beard.

Corey has what I call the Cop Cut now. Says he'll grow the top out and put three braids in back, like last year's look of Ragnar on the Vikings. We'll see.